Dracula Ants: Minor Workers Become Queens In Mystrium

Six new species of Dracula ants from the Malagasy region have been discovered and they represent a completely new twist in the typically rigid caste system of ants, where anatomy is typically destiny.  Mystrium species have unique features such as long, spatulate mandibles that snap together (Gronenberg et al. 1998); wingless queens that in some undetermined species are even smaller than workers (Molet et al. 2007); and large, wingless individuals intermediate between workers and queens, which behave like queens (Molet et al. 2012). read more

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